Eliot Spitzer and Anthony Weiner Lead New Polls

It’s mid-July, the heat dome has descended upon the Northeast, and foul balls hit in tonight’s Midsummer Classic may get stuck in mid-air. As many of us wilt, it’s getting harder to summon the will to be surprised by surprising news. So don’t take this with a grain of salt because you need to stay hydrated: According to a new Quinnipiac poll, both Eliot Spitzer and Anthony Weiner are leading in their respective contests for New York City comptroller and mayor.

Weiner gets 25 percent of primary voters, with 22 percent for City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, 11 percent for former Comptroller William Thompson, 10 percent for Public Advocate Bill de Blasio, 7 percent for Comptroller John Liu, 1 percent for former City Council member Sal Albanese and 21 percent undecided.

As for former New York Governor Spitzer, he’s opened up a 15-point lead (48%-33%) over his opponent, Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer.

Of course, it’s early and people are probably way too hot and tired to bother thinking up the name of another candidate for either office, but RealClearPolitics offers this explanation:

Both Spitzer and Weiner have built their leads in part through support from a plurality of black voters in the city. Those voters backed Spitzer over Stringer by a margin of 61 percent to 26 percent in the Quinnipiac poll, and they backed Weiner over Quinn by 31 percent to 16 percent.

Another data point in the polls suggest that corruption (in the professional sense) seems to be–by a large margin–much more of a problem for Democratic voters in New York than corruption (in the moral sense).